"No, sir, I ain't lyin'. I ain't lyin'."
"How old are you right now?"
"Fifty."
"You ain't as old as I thought, but you ain't gonna be fifty-one. You're a stubborn buzzard, but you ain't gonna be fifty-one. Bring him out. "
Fogarty led the old man outside with only one shoe, and Jack threw the rope over the limb of the maple. He tied a knot, looped the rope through the opening in the knot-a loop that would work like an animal's choker chain-and slipped it over Streeter's neck. Jack pulled open a button, one down from the collar, to give the rope plenty of room.
"Jack," Fogarty said, shaking his head. Jack tugged the rope until he took up all the slack and the rope rose straight up from Streeter's neck.
"One more chance," Jack said. "Where is that goddamn still you were headed for?"
"Jee-zus Keh-ryst, mister, there just ain't no still, you think I'm kiddin' you'? You got a rope around my neck. You think I wouldn't tell you anything I knew if I knew it? Jee-zus, mister, I don't want to die."
"Listen, Jack. I don't think we ought to do this."
Fogarty was trembling. The poor goddamn trucker. Like watching a movie and knowing how it ends, Fogarty said later.
"Shitkicker!" Jack yelled. "Where is it? SHITKICKER! SHITKICKER!"
Before the old man could answer, Jack tugged at the rope and up went Streeter. But he had worked one hand loose and he made a leap as Jack tugged. He grabbed the rope over his head and held it.
"Retie the son of a bitch," Jack said, and Fogarty knew then he was party to a murder. Full accomplice now and the tied-up Bartlett kid a witness. There would be a second murder on this night. Fogarty, how far you've come under Jack's leadership. He tied the old man's hands, and Jack then wound the rope around both his own arms and his waist so it wouldn't slip, and he jerked it again and moved backward. The old man's eyes bugged as he rose off the ground. His tongue came out and he went limp. The Bartlett kid yelled and then started to cry, and Jack let go of the rope. The old man crumpled.
"He's all right," Jack said. "The old son of a bitch is too miserable to die. Hit him with some water."
Fogarty half-filled a pail from an outside faucet and threw it on Streeter. The old man opened his eyes.
"You know, just maybe he's telling the truth," Fogarty said.
"He's lying."
"He's doing one hell of a good job."
Jack took Fogarty's pistol and waved it under Streeter's nose. At least he can t kill him with that, Fogarty thought.
"It's too much work to hang you," Jack said to Streeter, "so I'm gonna blow your head all over the lawn. I'll give you one more chance."
The old man shook his head and closed his eyes. His grin was gone. I finally got rid of that, is what Jack thought. But then he was suddenly enraged again at the old man. You made me do this to you, was the nature of Jack's accusation. You turned me into a goddamn sadist because of your goddamn stinking country stubbornness. He laid the barrel of the pistol against the old man's head and then he thought: Fogarty. And he checked the cylinder. No bullets. He gave Fogarty a look of contempt and handed him back the empty pistol. He took his own.38 from his coat pocket, and Streeter, watching everything, started to tremble, his lip turned down now. Smile not only gone, but that face unable even to remember that it had smiled even once in all its fifty years. Jack fired one shot. It exploded alongside Streeter's right ear. The old man's head jerked and Jack fired again, alongside the other ear.
"You got something to tell me now, shitkicker?" Jack said.
The old man opened his eyes, saucers of terror. He shook his head. Jack put the pistol between his eyes, held it there for seconds of silence. Then he let it fall away with a weariness. He stayed on his haunches in front of Streeter, just staring. Just staring and saying nothing.
"You win, old man," he finally said. "You're a tough monkey."
Jack stood up slowly and pocketed his pistol. Fogarty and one of the porch guards drove Streeter and Bartlett back to their truck. Fogarty ripped out their ignition wires and told them not to call the police. He drove back to Acra and slept the sleep of a confused man.
When Speed had brought her from the car into the house, Kiki had said to him, "What's going to happen with those men?"
"I don't know. Probably just some talk."
"Oh, God, Joe, don't let him hurt them. I don't want to be mixed up in that kind of shit again, please, Joe."
"I'll do what I can do, but you know Jack's got a mind of his own."
"I'll go and see him. Or maybe you could tell him to come in. Maybe if I asked him not to do anything, for me, don't do it for me, he wouldn't do it."
"I'll tell him you said it."
"You're a nice guy, Joe."
"You go to bed and stay upstairs. Do what I tell you. "
"Yes, Joe."
Kiki was thinking that Joe really and truly was a nice guy and that maybe she could make it with him if only she wasn't tied up with Jack. Of course, she wouldn't do anything while she was thick with Jack. But it was nice to think about Joe and his red hair and think about how nice he would be to play with. He was nicer than Jack, but then she didn't love Jack because he was nice.
She worried whether Jack had killed the two men when she later heard the two shots and the screaming. But she had thought the worst at the Monticello, thought Jack had killed those men when they had really tried to kill him. She didn't want to think bad things about Jack again. But she lived half an hour with uncertainty. Then Jack came into her room and said the men were gone and nobody got hurt.
"Did you get the information you wanted'?" she asked.
"Yeah, I don't want to talk about it."
"Oh, good. Are you done now?"
"All done."
"Then we can finish the evening the way we intended."
"It's finished."
"I mean really finished."
"And I mean really finished. "
He kissed her on the cheek and went to his bedroom. He didn't come back to see her or ask her to come to him. She tried to sleep, but she kept wanting to finish the evening, continue from where she and Jack had left off in the car in the silence and the chilliness and the brightness of the new moon on the open fields. She wanted to lie alongside Jack and comfort him because she knew from the way he was behaving that he had the blues. If she went in and loved him, he would feel better. Yet she felt he didn't really want that, and she rolled over and tossed and turned, curled and uncurled for another hour before she decided: Maybe he really does want it. So then, yes, she ought to do it. She got up and very quietly tiptoed into Jack's room and stood naked alongside his bed. Jack was deeply asleep. She touched his ear and ran her fingers down his cheek, and all of a sudden she was looking down the barrel of his.38 and he was bending her fingers back so far she was screaming. Nobody came to help her. She thought of that later. Jack could have killed her and nobody would have tried to stop him. Not even Joe.
"You crazy bitch! What were you trying to do?"
"I just wanted to love you."
"Never, never wake me up that way. Don't ever touch me. Call me and I'll hear it, but don't touch me."
Kiki was weeping because her hand hurt so much. She couldn't bend her fingers. When she tried to bend them, she fainted. When she came to, she was in a chair and Jack was all white in the face, looking at her. He was slapping her cheek lightly just as she came out of it.
"It hurts an awful lot."
"We'll go get a doctor. I'm sorry, Marion, I'm really sorry I hurt you."
"I know you are, Jack."
"I don't want to hurt you."
"I know you don't."
"I love you so much I'm half nuts sometimes."
"Oh, Jackie, you're not nuts, you're wonderful and I don't care if you hurt me. It was an accident. It was all my fault."
"We'll go get the doc out of bed."
"He'll fix me up line, and then we can come back and finish the evening."